Serenissima
by Gin-kyo
Summary: Dio and Giorno spend time together in Venice. AU


**Serenissima**

* * *

Dio takes long slow strides along the perimeter of the old monastery cloister. He is a figure in shadow but the Istrian stone of the interior is bleached by the sun and burning pure salt-white. The old masons called the stone 'material light' and so, Dio finds himself pacing around sun. This is not exactly his ideal home, especially not after the flight from Cairo so many years ago (though, to him, it feels more like a blink). But for now, it will suffice.

He pauses long enough to turn his eyes to the light, to see his son.

The covered walkway with its series of columns and archways enclose the bright square courtyard and Giorno stands the center of it. A lace parasol rests on his shoulder—some woman had left behind in her rush to leave this island. Intricate patterns of space between the threads cast a glow of whitegold on his skin. He walks as well (paces), lost in his own thoughts as long nimble fingers spin the handle, the crisp shapes turn into a blurry dapple that swims across high cheekbones. Around and around.

Giorno is shining and invincible in the day but Dio is willing to subsist on slim shadows to observe him, with great anticipation of what he may find. There will be plenty of time, on this island of their own—his new home—to learn.

The Island of San Michele, named after the Archangel, is an island of the dead. That is to say, it is great cemetery fallen into elegant decay. It is square like the courtyard is square and entirely surrounded by a high wall, forbiddingly grand. Past the single gated entrance several histories mix together, for a time it was a monastery and at another time, a prison. This is where Dio and Giorno are living.

Elite Passione interlopers had taken care of matters, arranged, with carefully pulled strings, to borrow the Island indefinitely from the Venetian government. Slowly, the waterbuses stopped running; the line was removed from the map. Visitors, mourners, priests, and caretakers alike were forced to leave in hurry and the island turned into something like a sovereign castle, a truly haunted thing. Now, the tourists en route from Murano can only stare at the regal Cypress trees peaking over the walls and wonder…

A special funerary gondola was to be prepared for transporting Dio to the island in broad daylight. He was to lie, supine, in a coffin and wait silently like a corpse to be pulled up to dock. But Dio refused this and so, instead, he and Giorno took a gondola in the middle of the night. Giorno stood upon the rowing platform. Dio lay flat in the open air, looking up at the night sky. He had to lay flat. Something in him, some learned instinct. He felt what it was like to be rocked by water when before it had only encased him. Giorno worked the oar, pushed them slowly through the cradle waves of the soft lagoon. And Dio would have drifted off to that labyrinth of blueblack dreams had Giorno not been humming some half-remembered barcarolle song…without words, a rhythm like the strokes of the oar. His eyes fixed on the stars.

With Giorno away from Passione headquarters (for a time) and Dio cut off from his network of followers, even his most favorite (for a time) they walked through the gardens of neutral territory.

Their unspoken motives swirling like ocean waves beneath crackling ice, differences put aside, hidden trump cards out of hand, they were… spending time together. There was this. The red wine was enough. They shared a vintage bottle, standing in the private shade of the crypt below the church.

Giorno had ordered a couple of the finest of silk suits to be handmade to their exact measurements in the region of Abruzzo. (They shared a taste for the lustrous)

When the garments were finally delivered and donned, Giorno smoothed his hands over the front and voiced his appreciation for the work of ten thousand silkworms. Dio was taken back more than a century, to the last time he wore a suit. He tugged on the sleeves, the fibers so strong that even he would have to exert an effort to tear them.

"You're trying to tame me." Dio barked out suddenly, and then with strange amusement in his voice, "Trying to swaddle me in the finest garments that Italy has to offer, give me the polish of a businessman. This silk feels as smooth as water. Ha! …I haven't felt this in a very long time."

"Do you like it?" Giorno asked, sounding pleased with himself.

Dio's smile was animal, showed fangs brimming white. It was indulgent. It was the grimace of accepting a challenge. "For you, I may. We will see how long it lasts."

Some nights they walked the streets of Venice together, through multicolored light, dressed sharply in their structured silk, heels ringing on the pavement with an air of such importance that no one ever bothered them. Not that they often encountered another soul, the city itself only awoke when its citizens and visitors were asleep. Giorno stopped, as his father did when peering curiously at the painted masks through store windows. And sometimes on their walks, Dio would go on about how he read that Venice was not only sinking, but tilting. Yes, tilting! Like the stern of a huge ship claimed by the sea. He illustrated by angling his hand, rigid fingers, sharp nails, sliding down into the depths.

They went to sleep at sunrise, and rested for much of the day. Dio, down in the crypt, in coffin specially prepared for him. Giorno, directly above, in the apse of the church, on a blanket draped over a hardwood pew. A great willow tree born from Gold Experience's touch on the altar grew up to its full height and its voluminous branches filled the copula, the living centerpiece. A breeze rustled through its wispy branches, weightless, like long strands of hair, half-whispered lullabies.

"Giorno!" Dio calls suddenly from the shadows. "Come to me for a moment."

With a light touch on the handle, Giorno turns the lost parasol into a pigeon and it flies off, to return to its rightful owner, surely somewhere on the mainland by now.

Giorno walks across the courtyard, past the wellhead and finally to the archways. On his clothes there is embroidery of golden leafy vines running up from ankle to shoulder and the glittering threads turn dim as Giorno's body is cut in half, perfectly down the middle. (Pain flares in Dio's neck.) Light and shadow divide the son. Then, at last, Giorno takes that step to fully enter his world, into the covered walkway. The clacking of his shoes, stepping from heel to toe echo against the stone walls. He looks tall, perhaps because he needed to look tall, elevated by the lifts in his soles. Measured and confident, he strides that line, passes through portals of sunlight cast by the arcade, wearing the crowns of both light and dark. His Princeling, his Daywalker. His flesh and blood.

"I have a favor to ask. Please follow me, I'll show you."

Down, down, in the dark, they go to a room that holds a stone pedestal and a single white skull upon it."I want you to grow your flowers around there, Giorno." Dio commands.

Giorno calls out Gold Experience and touches the stone pedestal and a wreath of white chrysanthemum encircle it so the skull looks as though it's resting on a cloud of blooms. "They are traditional here", he explains. "Used for the dead and for the Saints."

Dio steps back, slowly, soles shifting on powdery stone. He closes the gate of wrought iron and says, "Do the same here. The whole wall. Cover it."

And Giorno walks down the hall, dragging his fingertips over stone….blooms spread out of stone so incredibly dense and uniform and perfect they are like white ashlars…a wall of soft white sealing, it is a mausoleum to rival the Taj Mahal in its purity.

"These are good." He says even as he feels the wild urge to tear it all down right there. To rip it apart, to return to what he had just sequestered, until the little room was all petals and lime plaster dust…bent iron and him. He may just…

Giorno's hand clasps around his wrist, a loud clap on skin and jangling of bangles. Holds back his arm before he could act. Sternly, "These are alive, father." Giorno's hold is strong but nothing compared to the strength that Dio has to unleash, able to render Giorno a butterfly in a hurricane. A swallowtail all swallowed up.

Even as Dio sees through a film of red, he lets his arm be guided down back to his side, looks Giorno in the face and finds that his own son is staring hard at him, amber eyes lock right on his neck.

"If visitors could see this now they would wonder who it was for." Softly, "I must wonder the same…"  
Dio dismisses this, a wave of the hand. "That is the very purpose of unmarked tombs, they are meant to make you wonder. But for me, it is no tomb. You are only to open the wall for me when I wish to enter."

"If you must keep your secrets…" Giorno says but Dio knows…knows well, that this will not be the end of it.

"Come now Giorno, it is 7:48. The night is almost here. Shall we go for our walk? There are many other things to talk about, as always."

When they walk out into that night, the dead stir in their sleep…gravestones rumble and funerary flowers bloom in moonlight.


End file.
